Disadvantages of Migrating Website to New URL
-
Hi There,
I am currently struggling with the ranking of my website. No matter how many initiatives I try (backlinking, blog commenting, social posting, etc.) I can't seem to make any progression in Google Search. I've done competitive metrics through Open Site Explorer and can't seem to really find the reason why my site is not ranking as well as my competitors. The only one possible glaring element I've thought about is my website URL. This company is in the heating and cooling industry and majority of my competitors have either "heating" or "cooling" or both in their website URL's but mine does not.
Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on if changing my URL and then redirecting my current URL would be a step in the right direction help me to climb the rankings in Google Search?
Thanks!
-
Thank you so much for the reply!
I've been working on tracking, analyzing and optimizing this particular website for about a year now. I've optimized my homepage for the best and most specific keyword I can and I've got a 94% optimization score on the page (I can't put the keyword in the URL as it's the homepage). I've added in my competitors into OSE and reviewed their backlinks and besides some local advertising backlinks they have received, my Moz stats are much better than the competition. There is one competitor in particular that is mult-national company and I know that as a small business I don't stand a change in ranking higher than them, however, the other top competitor I have in my local market - does not optimize and still ranks higher than my site. One of the largest frustrations I have with this particular competitor is that the page that results higher than mine has little to no content on it and in other searches (because we are in the same industry) - their homepage will rank higher than my optimized interior pages. We use facebook and link back to our service pages which contain our keywords as often as possible and my crawl from Moz shows 1 missing meta description tag (on a category) and that's it.
I did read up on the Moz Blog today and it seems like everything is on-track but there's no progress. I should also mention that the website is built on Wordpress and as far as I know from the stats I am pulling from Moz - I've covered my bases.
I'm not sure what other specifics I can offer that might assist me with this challenge.
I guess at this point - maybe a second set of eyes on an audit (outside of Moz - because I look at that all the time) is what I need????
If you have any recommendations on a comprehensive site audit, I'd be very interested.
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to this.
-
Thank you so much for the reply!
I've been working on tracking, analyzing and optimizing this particular website for about a year now. I've optimized my homepage for the best and most specific keyword I can and I've got a 94% optimization score on the page (I can't put the keyword in the URL as it's the homepage). I've added in my competitors into OSE and reviewed their backlinks and besides some local advertising backlinks they have received, my Moz stats are much better than the competition. There is one competitor in particular that is mult-national company and I know that as a small business I don't stand a change in ranking higher than them, however, the other top competitor I have in my local market - does not optimize and still ranks higher than my site. One of the largest frustrations I have with this particular competitor is that the page that results higher than mine has little to no content on it and in other searches (because we are in the same industry) - their homepage will rank higher than my optimized interior pages. We use facebook and link back to our service pages which contain our keywords as often as possible and my crawl from Moz shows 1 missing meta description tag (on a category) and that's it.
I did read up on the Moz Blog today and it seems like everything is on-track but there's no progress. I should also mention that the website is built on Wordpress and as far as I know from the stats I am pulling from Moz - I've covered my bases.
I'm not sure what other specifics I can offer that might assist me with this challenge.
I guess at this point - maybe a second set of eyes on an audit (outside of Moz - because I look at that all the time) is what I need????
If you have any recommendations on a comprehensive site audit, I'd be very interested.
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to this.
-
Hi Matt - As Bernadette said, there are many, many reasons why your site could not be gaining on your competitors in the SERPs. And without specifics, it's tough to say why... but unlikely to be the URL. It's actually probably due to not just one, but several reasons. As you are at the point where you are considering something as drastic as moving your site to a new domain, it sounds like now would be a good time to invest in a comprehensive site audit.
Oh, and did you happen to read today's post on The Moz Blog? I've Optimized My Site, But I'm Still Not Ranking—Help!
-
Matt, there are really a lot of reasons why a site won't seem to gain any ground when it comes to ranking in Google. It could be links, it could be content, it could be lack of social media, it could be a lack of local links and citations, or it could be something else. It could be just that you're in a competitive market and that the competition is doing more (or has been around longer).
Regardless, it's most likely NOT the URL. Every domain name has an equal chance of ranking in the search results. So whether or not your keyword is in the URL really doesn't make any difference. It could still be a URL issue or domain name issue, such as if you have other domain names redirecting to your site or if you have used another domain name in the past that has the same content on it.
Without specifics, it's tough to pinpoint a specific reason why the site's not ranking well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Question about my website ranking
Hi everyone I have sports website. My website DA, DR is good. I have created good quality backlinks. But still my website ranking is not improving. Can you guide me how to improve my website ranking. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | fktos.tam.906n0 -
Using the Same Word in Every URL
Just looking to get some opinions on this. Some coupon sites use "coupon" in all of their URLs - this is a practice I would avoid, as to me it is a little spammy. For example:
On-Page Optimization | | vanessakohl
.com/amazon-coupons/
.com/ebay-coupons/
.com/walmart-coupons/
... and so on for thousands of other brands. I don't think this is necessary, as Google will understand from the content, backlinks and the domain name (including the word "coupon") that brand pages are coupon-focused. Any other thoughts on this?0 -
Canonical URL Tag Usage
I have a large website, almost 1500 pages that each market different keywords for the trucking logistics industry. I don't really understand the new Canonical URL Tag USAGE. They say to use it so the page is not a duplicate but the page that MOZ is call for to have the tag isn't a duplicate. It promotes 1 keyword that no other page directly promotes. Here is the page address, now what tag would I put up in the HEAD so google don't treat it as a duplicate page. http://www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php 1. Number 1 the actual page address because I want it treated like its own page or do I have to use #2 below? 2. I don't know why I would use #2 as I want it to be its own page, and get credit and listed and ranked as its own page. Can anyone clarify this stuff to me as I guess i am just new to this whole tag usage.
On-Page Optimization | | dwebb0070 -
New Pages - Stable Rankings
Hello, Not a direct question really, just a poll really of your experience - I work with a few companies and have noticed recently that there seems to be an increase in the time it takes to go from a) showing up in the index (quickly within a day or two) to b) getting a stable ranking. I see spikes over the first few weeks (even up to 3 months) before the rankings eventually settle. Have you noticed the same, is it taking longer to achieve a stable ranking, do you work with any sites that get indexed, rank, and stay in the same slot for moderately competitive terms comparing to a year or tow ago? Interested to hear other people's experience and how long we expect to wait for new content to settle Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | xoffie0 -
URL Domain Used in Meta Description
Today I was asked if using a domain url in your meta description can have a negative impact on your website. This description includes a list of the homepage url, but directs visitors to a different internal page of the website. My concern fell with directing visitors to a different page of the site, but promoting the homepage in the description/snippet. With Penguin 2.1 release on the 4th, I'm very cautious of my links/urls. What are your thoughts behind this? What are the possible, if any negative impacts this could have on a site? This URL does have a brand name as so the Title.
On-Page Optimization | | flcity150 -
Getting Google to provide a different URL in SERP
For one of my client’s sites, I have several keywords that are ranking in the top 5 positions. However, they have a high bounce rate. I believe this is because Google is delivering a different URL than the page we have optimized for the keyword. Any suggestions on ways I can get Google to present our preferred page?
On-Page Optimization | | TopFloor0 -
Maximum length of a URL for good SEO?
Hi there, We have a content database as part of our site and I noticed that the way the database is loaded with new content, it means that the URL’s for these pages are really long, around 100 characters or sometimes more http://www.xxxyy.org/knowledge-base/documents/word1-word2-word3-word4-word5-word6-word7-word8 Is there a suggted maximum character length for a URL? Kind of like for title tag where I max out at 69… Should I truncate the URL’s or at least reduce the numbers of words in them to something less spammy? Does that make a difference? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0 -
Does it matter if your URL ends in .net or .com?
Someone told me that having a URL that ends in .net (instead of .com) will hurt my site's SEO. Is that true?
On-Page Optimization | | matt-145670